The present invention relates to an electrical connector assembly.
Electronic controllers used in agricultural, off road vehicle and/or automotive applications are often designed with custom integrated electrical connector features which allow the controller to mate directly with standard, high volume production sealed vehicle wire harness connectors. Staked blades and/or pins are often mounted directly to the printed circuit board in close proximity to the enclosure so that features in the enclosure provide direct support, sealing surfaces and latching means for vehicle wiring harness connectors. For connector integrity, tight manufacturing tolerances are required to make sure that the blades/pins in the circuit board will accurately line up with the integrated connector openings in the electronic controller enclosure. The design requirements for these integrated connector features in the predominately die cast aluminum enclosures can result in high tooling costs. Since customers often demand similar controllers with unique connection requirements, the enclosure designs cannot be reused or standardized to take advantage of high volume production economies of scale.
One such connector assembly is described in published U.S. patent application No. U.S. 2003/01624221. This connector assembly includes a housing which has openings or receptacles which receive header connectors. However, different size header connectors are mounted in corresponding different size receptacles. Thus, different housings would be required for connector assemblies having different sizes and arrangements of header connectors. It is desired to have a connector assembly which permits the use of a standardized housing.